Daily Archives: February 11, 2011

He had a much longer staying power than Ben Ali of Tunisia, but in the end, Hosni Mubarak’s rule as 4th President of Egypt since 1981 came to an end on February 11, 2011. I suspect that the military finally picked their side but also made the final nudge after that back to back P/VP speeches yesterday.

While the Egyptians celebrate their new freedom, elsewhere in the world, this news cannot be good. First Tunisia, then Egypt. If you have been in power for 10-20-40 years, surely the events in the last several weeks would give you some very serious pause. Who’s next?

MUAMMAR AL-QADDAFI of Libya
Since September 1969Years in power: 41

ALI ABDULLAH SALEH of Yemen
Assumed office as President of North Yemen in 1978
As President of Yemen from 1990–present
Years in power: 32

TEODORO OBIANG MBASOGO of Equatorial Guinea
Since August 1979
Years in power: 31JOSE EDUARDO DOS SANTOS of AngolaSeptember 1979
Years in power: 31

ROBERT MUGABE of ZimbabweSince February 1980
Years in power: 30HOSNI MUBARAK of EgyptSince October 1981
Years in power: 29PAUL BIYA of CameroonSince November 1982
Years in power: 28

YOWERI MUSEVENI of UgandaSince January 1986
Years in power: 25

KING MSWATI III of SwazilandCame to the throne in April 1986
Years in power: 24

BLAISE COMPAORÉ of Burkina FasoSince October 1987
Years in power: 23

ZINE EL ABIDINE BEN ALI of TunisiaSince bloodless coup in November 1987
Years in power: 23

OMAR HASSAN AL-BASHIR of SudanSince 1989
Years in power: 22

ISLAM KARIMOV of UzbekistanSince March 1990
Years in power: 20

IDRISS DÉBY of ChadSince December 1990
Years in power: 20

Isaias Afewerki of EritreaSince May 1991
Years in power: 19
(he’ll get his 20-year dictator’s badge in 3 months!)

So anyway, we’re kind of wondering …. imagine if we had Facebook and Twitter back in 2002 … would we have marched into Baghdad 2,721 days ago on a freedom agenda?

I supposed we cannot ignore the other rulers in Egypt’s neighborhood who must have felt the power of this quake all the way down their spines:

Abdullah II of the Hashemite Kingdom of JordanAscended the throne on 7 February 1999 (after death of father, King Hussein who was in power for 46 years)Years in power: 12 years
(highly educated population with chronic high unemployment rate)

Mohammed VI of MoroccoAscended the throne on July 1999(after death of father, Hassan II of Morocco who was in power for 38 years)Years in power: 11 years
(second most populous Arab country after Egypt, 10% unemployment rate)

Bashar al-Assad of the SyriaAssumed office on 17 July 2000(after death of father, Hafez al-Assad who was in power for three decades)Years in power: 10
(emergency law since 1963, 9.2.% unemployment, and 30% of the population lives in poverty)

King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz of Saudi ArabiaAscended the throne on August 1, 2005(after death of half-brother, King Fahd who was in power for 23 years)Years in power: 5 years(issues with corruption, religious extremism and 11.6% unemployment rate)

So, anyway, we read NPR’s coverage recently: “Sometimes after a situation like this, however, an administration will go with a State Department professional in order to bring some much needed stability to an embassy. So it’s not a foregone conclusion that she’ll be replaced with another big political donor type.”

Sorry, did we laugh out loud? No such luck for US Embassy Dysfunctional in sunny Trinidad and Tobago, which got another political appointee for needed stability.

Today it may be US Embassy Luxembourg, but tomorrow, it’ll be another embassy. Sometimes the review is good, sometimes it’s bad. But the buck always stops at the front office of every chancery. Unless, it’s a political appointee, in which case, the buck stops at the appointing authority, the WH. After all, the President’s personal representative in a foreign country is responsible not just for the affairs of the state but ultimately, the entire mission including people and leaking faucets. Who says it’s all glamor and gowns?

Career ambassadors, unfortunately, are not exempt from similar leadership deficiencies, like this onewho was posted in an African post. The OIG says that “the Ambassador’s leadership is authoritarian, and staff believes dissent is unwelcome.” Sounds like an awful boss, too, but for some reason they don’t make quite a similar splash in the news. And even when some do, they can get recycled to other missions or get kicked upstairs (so hello, again). Or there is always retirement.

In any case, if Luxembourg turns out to be the OIG’s most requested report in years, then that’s a good learning opportunity for taxpayers. The OIG’s review of our embassies is about all the publicly available report we’re going to read about our diplomatic missions in far away lands.

L’affaire Luxembourg is all over the news now. We are, of course, still quite amazed how a 61-page report can generate all sorts of headlines.

Well — not always, of course. Some have been known to fly their own plane (140 official trips out of pocket in the eastern Caribbean) when Uncle Sam had severely limited travel money, or known to restore the ambassador’s residence when there was no repair money or build a wine cellar when there …well, Uncle Sam has not been known to fork out money for wine cellars.

Not sure we’re going to hear from either of the WA senators on this one.

Then there’s Calvin Eaves of Spooftimes.com (satire) who writes about Obama Looking for Smaller Diplomatic Post: “Perhaps if we just find her the right sized mattress, she will be able to get a good night’s sleep and be able to better perform the duties required of her post,” said President Obama.

And this one is not a headline, but striking still the same — 352 Lux Mag out of Luxembourg cites a French newspaper L’essential, and writes that “there are rumours that Stroum is currently working in Baghdad.” Oh, dear…. apparently, this magazine has never heard of the Googles.

At the Daily Press Brief on February 7, 2011, the State Dept’s spokesman was asked about the reported rebuttal from Ambassador Stroum:

QUESTION: Are you aware of any contact that the Department has had with your former ambassador to Luxemburg in the last – since Thursday?

MR. CROWLEY: She resigned. Beyond that, I’m not – what kind of contact would you be —

QUESTION: Well, she says that she’s written a rebuttal or – to the IG report.

MR. CROWLEY: To the IG?

QUESTION: And I’m just wondering if you’re aware of that.

MR. CROWLEY: Well, if her rebuttal has been received by the IG, I’m sure the IG is aware of that.

QUESTION: Well, but you’re not?

MR. CROWLEY: I mean, I – she resigned from her office. She has returned to the United States, and she’s resumed her private life.

Well, sure enough, as PJ Crowley said, the OIG is aware of it. When we inquired about Ambassador Stroum’s rebuttal, Douglas Welty, the Congressional & Public Affairs Officer of the Office of Inspector General sent us the following response:

“[T]he Office of Inspector General (OIG) received rebuttal comments from Ambassador Stroum on January 10. This was well after our inspection team had departed post in November 2010, and her opportunity to discuss the findings in person had passed. However, after receiving her comments, part of the team was reassembled, and they reconciled her comments with the inspection work papers. OIG found sufficient support for the judgments and conclusions in the report, and OIG responded to her, as such, on January 14.”

So rebuttal sent according to Ambassador Stroum, received and responded to according to the OIG. Also that the “OIG does not share its work papers, Inspection Evaluation Review responses or other material other than our published report.”

[T]he inspector general also does what’s called the Inspector’s Evaluation Report (IER), a “report card” on the ambassador and the No. 2 official, the deputy chief of mission. These are not made public.

Career employees complain that, for many years, negative evaluations sent to the White House for the 50 or so political ambassadors most often seem to disappear into the void. But this time the State Department – presumably with White House sign-off – moved with dispatch.
Department officials called her in shortly after the IG’s assessment circulated internally in December, we were told. Stroum flew back to attend a meeting at Foggy Bottom with her attorney and senior department officials. About three weeks later, on Jan. 13, she publicly announced, “with some regret,” her resignation, saying she needed “to focus on my family and personal business.”

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) reports are posted on OIG’s Web sites in accordance with section 8L of The Inspector General Act of 1978. It is extremely rare to see revised reports posted there.
Of course, this is a free country. And anyone can write a book and sell it on teevee like the Known and Unknown Rummy. And by the way, the former US Ambassador to Barbados recently launched her book “More Than a Walk on the Beach: Confessions of an Unlikely Diplomat.” No, she’s not the most recent one in Barbados with a plane.

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There are very few moments in our lives where we have the privilege to witness history taking place. This is one of those moments. This is one of those times. The people of Egypt have spoken, their voices have been heard, and Egypt will never be the same.
[…]

This is the power of human dignity, and it can never be denied. Egyptians have inspired us, and they’ve done so by putting the lie to the idea that justice is best gained through violence. For in Egypt, it was the moral force of nonviolence — not terrorism, not mindless killing — but nonviolence, moral force that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.

And while the sights and sounds that we heard were entirely Egyptian, we can’t help but hear the echoes of history — echoes from Germans tearing down a wall, Indonesian students taking to the streets, Gandhi leading his people down the path of justice.

As Martin Luther King said in celebrating the birth of a new nation in Ghana while trying to perfect his own, “There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom.” Those were the cries that came from Tahrir Square, and the entire world has taken note.